Service is the rent that you pay for room on this earth.

... all Americans are the prisoners of racial prejudice.

America has the laws and the material resources it takes to insure justice for all its people. What it lacks is the heart, the humanity.

Laws will not eliminate prejudice from the hearts of human beings. But that is no reason to allow prejudice to continue to be enshrined in our laws - to perpetuate injustice through inaction.

I was the first American citizen to be elected to Congress in spite of the double drawbacks of being female and having skin darkened by melanin. When you put it that way, it sounds like a foolish reason for fame. In a just and free society it would be foolish. That I am a national figure because I was the first person in 192 years to be at once a congressman, black and a woman proves, I think, that our society is not yet either just or free.

Some members of Congress are among the best actors in the world.

Tremendous amounts of talent are lost to our society just because that talent wears a skirt.